Insult to Injury: Rethinking our Responses to Intimate Abuse

Rating:
Summary: Bravo -- Courageous
Review: An honest and courageous look at how despite good intentions, feminist tunnel vision and success at obtaining complete criminalization of intimate abuse and violence has ignored the dynamics of such abuse. The feminist author/social worker/law school professor powerfully condemns the politically correct dogma that only men's violence warrants attention and calls for reflection by everyone on their own contribution. The one-sided view of intimate violence has resulted in frequently making the lives of women (and men) worse and in more rather than less violence, particularly for minorities. She calls for a creative solution along the lines of the restorative justice used by South Africa that would deescalate the war between men and women, result in less violence, and could lead to improved intimate relations for all of us. The question that is unanswered is if "the entrenched and very powerful" feminists (quoting Archbishop Desmond Tutu) will be willing to give up the power that their simple but inaccurate portrayal and widespread legal assumption of only men as violent has given the feminist movement.

Rating:
Summary: A Brave, Groundbreaking Work
Review: Everyone who cares about the subject of domestic violence should read this book. Period. She smashes stereotypes and takes incredibly personal risks while doing so. I salute her.

Rating:
Summary: Mills misrepresents feminist theories, research, and policy
Review: Mills' analysis of domestic abuse (and, by extension, the criminal justice system's response to such abuse) is fatally flawed by her failure to address the enormous empirical literature challenging the "sexually symmetry" conception of domestic abuse and her unquestioning reliance on widely criticised studies which rely solely on the Conflict Tactics Scale.

For an excellent critique of Mills' approach, see Walter Dekersdy's review of Insult to Injury in the British Journal of Criminology, vol 44, p 621 (arguing that Mills' book reflects "an inadequate understanding of feminist theories, research, policy proposals.")

Mills creates straw men of feminist criminal justice policies by misrepresenting their theoretical and empirical groundings and then knocking down the false constructs she's created. It's too bad that she didn't engage sincerely with feminist criminal justice theories and policies. There are many important conceptual and normative issues that could and should be addressed regarding the feminist criminal justice response to domestic abuse. However, by failing to engage sincerely with feminist theories, research and policy proposals, Mills misses an opportunity to move the discussion forward in a productive manner. Instead, this book simply misrepresents the feminist conception of and response to domestic abuse.